


late spring storms

by palaces_outofparagraphs



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Archie Andrews is a Good Friend, Gen, Mentions of alcoholism, Post s2 finale, Southside Serpent Jughead Jones, all the serpents living in fred's house because he's a GOOD DAD, fp is trying his best, fred andrews is a Good Dad, fred being EVERYONES DAD but mostly jughead's in this one tbh, jughead is afraid of thunderstorm and fred is an excellent father, jughead is the hero we all deserve, tryna be cool gang leader jughead jones but hes scared of everything and i love him for it., wow that was a tag already
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 03:18:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14728946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palaces_outofparagraphs/pseuds/palaces_outofparagraphs
Summary: Fred Andrews keeps vigil in the kitchen; with a house full of Serpent teens, you never know who's going to be needing an ear late at night. Jughead Jones, despite being a gang leader and having been through objectively worse, is still terrified down to his bones of thunderstorms. Things have a way of working out.





	late spring storms

**Author's Note:**

> unadulterated sap and self indulgent fluff ahead. set right after s2 but pretend archie didnt get arrested or pretend that happened like a month later idk!!!!!

The house was crammed with Serpents, and finally, at two in the morning, it was something resembling quiet. Not entirely, of course -- a house crammed with Serpents, especially teenage Serpents, was never going to be  _ quiet.  _ Jughead hoped Mr. Andrews had known what he was getting into, hoped he wasn’t being kept awake by the rustling and the muttering and the cursing and the snoring and the sleeptalking. 

And the thunder. The rain had started before the thunder, somewhere around midnight patter patter patter on the roof of Archie’s bedroom, splattering against his windows; and for the past ten minutes tendrils and murmurs of thunder had been suggesting themselves into existence. Jughead remembered reading somewhere, or maybe hearing it from someone, he couldn’t remember-  a long time ago, either way, that thunderstorms never lasted longer than 30 minutes. It could rain all day, but it wouldn’t thunder for longer than thirty minutes.

It never felt like that, though. Thunderstorms lasted forever, were eternal; the thunderstorms of his childhood lasted days, weeks, months. Whole blocks of years seemed colored in by the memories of crashing and howling winds through the night; six months of age seven, fourteen weeks of age nine. Maybe the rest of sixteen would be thunderstorms, too.

The Serpents had been here a few days, joyfully eating all of Fred’s food as FP and the three or four other remaining Serpent adults were trying to find accomodation elsewhere. A couple of men on bikes - not FP, curiously - had come through a couple of times and told Fred almost threateningly he was under no obligation to keep them sheltered, but Fred had just laughed, leaning against the doorway of his house, looking effortlessly confident and in charge. “I’m a dad, no worries,” he’d said, “this is my job, the kids will be safe here.”

Most of their parents had left town. The few adults who remained, including FP, had decided en masse the day after FP’s retirement that they would no longer consider themselves Serpents, that the title would be passed to the youth. That didn’t mean they were gone, though. They were still trying to fix this. FP was trying to fix this. Behind the scenes, they said. Alumni. Alice Cooper was helping out too, in between her grieving and her grandmothering.  _ Serpents don’t shed their skin so easy. _

There were days where Jughead thought he could never forgive his father for anything that had happened, and days he knew he already had.

He stretched out his legs as far as they would go, almost hanging off the edge of Archie’s twin bed. There wasn’t much space in the house and Jughead had a whole trailer; he was only sleeping over here at all because of Toni. The rest of the Serpents had delightfully acclimatized to the Andrews’ house - it reminded Jughead of the way Sweat Pea and Fangs had been immediately swept away by life at Riverdale High, anything was better than home - but Toni, he could tell, was still stressed, staying here. Jughead and her had had milkshakes after school, talking about their plans for the Serpents now that Jughead was “in charge, or whatever,” (Toni had said, with a wave of her hand that made it clear that she was definitely the one in charge), and all she had said about Fred was how grateful he was opening his door, how glad she was to have some place to stay, her fingers taptaptapping on the table. Maybe it was staying in a house with so many men, maybe it was the clean cut apparent perfection of suburban life, maybe it was the semi-persistent presence of Alice Cooper, but staying at the Andrews was throwing her off. Jughead had read between the lines, and shown up that night, because when was he not at Archie’s; and when Betty had gone home and Fred and three Serpents had finished the dishes, Jughead had tentatively asked if he could stay, too, and Toni had visibly relaed.

So, he’d been right. Toni needed a familiar face in the house.

Jughead had been planning on sleeping on the ground - there were a lot of teenagers in this house and only so many beds. He had insisted, in fact, on sleeping on the ground; adamantly argued to sleep on the ground for  _ two hours,  _ but Fred Andrews had said over his dead body was a boy who’d just gotten out of the hospital a week and a half ago going to sleep on any less than a bed.

Jughead kept forgetting that, even though he could still feel the sharp pain of his taped up ribs every time he inhaled or exhaled too deeply, even though one of his eyes was still swollen and dark, even though he had a jagged scar across his arm where there wasn’t a tattoo anymore, and another, deeper, scarier looking that cut from his chest to his torso and still stung sometimes when he pressed his fingers to it too hard.

(Betty had swept her fingers over it, tears dripping down her soft cheeks, told him never to do something like that ever again, it hadn’t hurt as much when it was her. Nothing did.)

So, Riverdale was still Riverdale, after it all. Hermione was mayor. The Serpents were at Fred’s. And yes, Hiram owned the Southside, but Veronica and Jughead were working on it. Betty loved him. Archie and him were friends again. Things were approaching okay again. Things were approaching a place he could understand again, after what felt like a really long time.

There was another, earsplitting, crash of thunder and he pressed his face into the pillow, willing away the world. 

After all he had been through, his lingering fear of thunderstorms didn’t make any sense, but here he was.

He sighed, rolling over and staring at the ceiling. The ceiling of Archie’s room was just as familiar, more familiar, than the ceiling of the trailer he called home. He couldn’t count the number of sleepovers he’d had here, or for that matter the number of after school naps. He knew the house by heart, knew it like the back of his hand; in dreams, he would drive up to his trailer or Southside High and the interior would be the Andrews’ house. He never knew what it meant.

All at once he was hungry, too hungry to ignore, too agitated by the now hammering storm outside to lie here another moment. There were Serpents in every bedroom and a few crashing on the couches in the den, but the living room was empty, and no one would see him sneak into the kitchen. Jughead knew how to be quiet. Growing up with an alcoholic taught you that. 

Such thoughts were so engrained it was hard to remember sometimes that things were so different now. It was always nice to remember. Remember that he still had a chance to grow up. That his father would always be an alcoholic, but maybe no longer the kind you had to tiptoe around.

He was surprised to see the light on in the kitchen when he’d crept down to it, and was about to turn and dash back upstairs when he saw Fred at the table. But Fred, immersed in a newspaper but his fatherly sixth sense always alive, looked up immediately, his gentle lined face breaking into a grin.

“Hey, Jug,” he said softly, as if for all the world he had been waiting for him.

“Oh, hey,” said Jughead. He was the Serpent King, yes, and he had been through hell and being beaten up by thirty men, but talking to Fred made him twelve again, banging through the back door into the kitchen after school with Archie, dropping his hand into his elbows at the table and chatting with Mr. Andrews as easily as Arch did, always so much easier than with his father. As long as he and Archie had been friends - forever, practically, ignoring the lapsed motnhs between the beginning of high school, and the beginning of this hell year - Mr. A. had been an essential, quiet part of the charm that brought Jughead to the Andrews house day after day after day. He was a dad the way he’d always wished his dad had been; and sometimes at sleepovers, or over dinner, Fred would tell stories about high school days, about him and FP, that made Jughead proud to be his son regardless.

“You okay, buddy?” Fred half-rose, grunting very slightly, his hand ghosting without him realizing to the place the bullet had gone into his chest. It was already reflexive for Jughead to touch his arm the same way. Something they had in common, now. “Everything all right up there?”

“Everything’s fine.” He didn’t know why he was shy. It was Fred, after all.

But it was thundering outside.

“Everything’s fine. I was just - uh, I was just hungry. But it’s okay, I’ll - ”

“If you’re hungry, you eat,” said Fred firmly. “Sit down. I’ll make you a sandwich with dinner leftovers-  ”

“It’s 2 a.m., Mr. A., it’s okay. I’ll just have some cereal.”

“Well, I’ll get it,” insisted Fred. “I was up anyway, hey. Sit down.” He stood up all the way, pushing Jug gently into a chair. “I was up anyway,” he repeated to the look of consternation on Jughead’s face. “It’s okay.”

The thing about growing up with an alcoholic was that you pretended anyone knew you were growing up with an alcoholic. Jughead was pretty sure hardly anyone did, but Fred knew. Fred knew everything, always going out of his way to assure Jughead he wasn’t in the way, he wasn’t being a bother.

Childhood was tainted: by thunderstorms, by alcoholism, by screaming fights in the middle of the night and his mother’s weeks in bed and Jellybean sobbing pitifully, pressed to him in the night. But there had always been salvation at the Andrews’.

As Fred poured him a bowl of cereal and milk, he spoke quietly, over his shoulder, as Jug tentatively sank his head into his elbows. “Matter of fact, something I wanted to ask you, Jug,” he said. “As king of the Serpents.”

How could he do it? How could he always do it, make Jughead feel like he was young enough to be cared for, and old enough to be taken seriously at the same time? Jug felt a stab of resentment, not for the first time, at Archie, for throwing this whole year away chasing after a mobster and ignoring his father. Archie didn’t know how good he had it, a dad like Fred.

He felt guilty immediately. FP was his dad, and he loved him so much. FP was a  _ good  _ dad, he was trying, trying, trying. FP wasn’t Fred, but he was his.

He pushed it away. “Oh, really?” said Jughead, making his voice normal, he hoped. “What’s that?”

“The older Serpents.. sorry, what are they calling themselves now?” Fred sat down across from him, sliding the bowl of Cocoa Puffs across the table.

“Serpent Alum,” said Jughead, taking a bite, then another. He’d been more scared than hungry, truth be told, but the food made both feelings recede.

“Serpent Alum. Alice, actually, came and talked to me about this, and then a couple of the others, while you were all at school. Said they wanted to compensate me, for putting you all up, knew that my grocery bill was going through the roof.” He paused. “It is, but I can handle it for now. In your opinion - should I take that money?”

Jughead paused between bites to weigh this. “What are your - concerns?” he asked.

“Well, to be brutally frank, I don’t want to be spending drug money on groceries,” said Fred honestly. “And for another thing, if the Serpents can’t afford it, I don’t want to take their money. I’m happy putting up the kids. My grocery bill is the most elastic part of my budget, and the company is doing well, and there’s always fewer expenses in the summer, especially since I had money set aside for Archie to go to music or football camp this summer but he’s decided to stay home with me.”

Jughead contemplated all this, part of his mind marveling at the utter normalcy of this bizarre conversation. “I’ll talk it over with my dad,” he said, glad to be able to say that about something. “I’ll ask him where the money’s coming from. I think we have enough to put into this, though. This is exactly the kind of thing we have funds for anyway, putting each other up.” He finished the last few bites of cereal. “Thanks for asking me,” he muttered into the spoon, knowing full well Fred could’ve gone straight to FP.

“You’re in charge now, aren’t you?” said Fred, eyes dancing. “Serpent King. Never thought I’d see the day the Serpents adopted a monarchy.”

“It doesn’t really make sense, to tell the truth,” said Jug ruefully, and Fred burst into laughter. It felt like a long time since he’d heard Fred laughed. It eased a grin onto his face for the first time in what felt like an equally long time. He laughed, too. It was easy to laugh, with Fred.

“Just be careful, Jug,” said Fred, when they quieted. “Don’t start dealing. Don’t go down.. don’t go down paths.”  _ Don’t turn into what FP turned into.  _ “You have a real chance here. A real opportunity. Turn around the lives of all these kids, and yourself. Your dad’s ready to help you any way he can.”  _ And so am I,  _ it didn’t need to be said, the words hung, soft, in the air between them.

“I know,” said Jughead. “I know.” He hesitated. “I never drink, you know,” he said, without expecting himself to. “Never touched a drop. Even when - even at the Wyrme. Nothing, ever, I know what could happen, I know it’s genetic. So I never have any. That’s something, right?”

Fred was looking at him in a way that made something in him yield, a little bit; something in him admit why he was saying it. “I’m proud of you, Jug,” he said. “Real proud of you, you hear? That’s not easy, round these parts. Keep it up. I know you can.”

“Thanks, Mr. A.” His voice would not crack now, he willed it not to, he was the Serpent King and surely should have some control. “That, that means a lot.”

Fred smiled. “You need any more?” he asked, motioning to Jughead’s almost-empty bowl of cereal.

“No, I’m okay.” 

_ Things I Can’t Tell my Father, So I Tell Fred Andrews.  _ He could write a book. Maybe that should be his next one, if he ever finished this one. It seemed to be a story without an ending. 

There was another, almighty, crash of thunder, and Jughead couldn’t stop himself from jumping, his eyes squeezing shut, his hands folding into fists. He hated it, hated the weak, broken feeling being scared did to him almost more than he hated the thunder itself. Hated that he was sixteen and still terrified, down to his bones, of something as natural as bad weather.

( _ It’s just weather.  _ He remembered, tangentially, Archie, in eighth grade, hand raised and nose scrunched in confusion when they learned about  _ Seasonal Affective Disorder  _ in health class. Archie wasn’t trying to be mean or crude, like Jason Blossom and Reggie Mantle were when they talked about mental health; he would never call someone  _ retarded  _ or refer to the hospital in the video they watched as  _ the loony bin.  _ Archie just didn’t know any better; his life was easy, simple, pure, he couldn’t imagine being brought down by something easy as the clouds drawn over the sky, as the sun setting too early.

Jughead remembered feeling like there was a vice around his chest, ticking off the symptoms in his notebook,  _ low energy, problems with sleep, change in appetite.  _ His stomach had growled. Sure it was cold these days, but his father hadn’t been home all week, drunk when he was, and he hadn’t eaten a meal since Thursday, so maybe it wasn’t  _ seasonal affective disorder,  _ but just his stupid, exhausting life.

It had been Betty, her face fierce and indignant, even though it was Archie, her best friend.  _ You just don’t understand,  _ she said,  _ people  _ die. He had always loved Betty a little bit for that; strong enough to even tell off Archie who she loved so desperately, dramatic enough to bring it straight to death.)

“Jug?”

He opened his eyes.

“Storms only last thirty minutes,” Jughead said, because there was no point in ever trying to hide anything from Fred. “I read that somewhere. Thunderstorms, the thunder and lightening part of it only lasts thirty minutes, but it never feels like it, you know?” His voice cracked clean down the middle as Fred reached his hand halfway across the table and covered Jug’s fist. “It never feels like it.”

“You’ve had a rough couple days,” said Fred after a moment. “It’s gonna be okay, Jug, you know that, right? You’re gonna be okay.”

Jughead swallowed, knowing his knuckles were going white under Fred’s hands. “I - ” another crash of thunder and he buried his head in his arms on the table.

Fred slid around so he was sitting on the chair next to him, wrapped one arm almost casually around his shoulders. “Hey,” he muttered. “Hey. It’s all right.”

Jughead nodded into his arms, wishing he wasn’t insane, but thinking if he was, if he had to be, it was all right - a little bit more all right - with Fred, with Archie’s dad, by his side.

Fred rose gently, and Jughead didn’t look up. He heard familiar clattering, a blast of water from the sink and then the kettle turning on. He focused on the seams of the hoodie he’d been sleeping in - it was early May, but the nights still turned cool, especially when it was storming out. As long as he could remember, even after everything that had happened, the Andrews slept will all their windows open from the beginning of April til the end of September.

Probably not that safe, considering the state of the town, but now they had a house full of Serpents, so.

He was trying to redirect, trying to guide himself back to normalcy, but he was in full thunderstorm panic mode now, all of him tense, all of him waiting for the next crash of thunder, for the world to end again, somewhere in the back of his subconscious he was waiting for the yelling to stop -

_ there’s no yelling -  _

but there had been in childhood, all the time, his parents; and that was what thunderstorms reminded him of, why it brought forth that deeply seated, visceral terror - chaos, and cacophony, and the world ending, waiting for the next crash.

“Jug.”

He looked up. Fred had set in front of him a steaming cup of hot chocolate, sipping his own, as if for all the world it wasn’t 2 in the morning. “It helps,” he said simply. “It’s gonna be all right, Jug.”

It objectively wasn’t - he was sixteen, a gang leader, had been arrested twice, gone on a hunger strike, been beaten up by thirty men with bats and spikes, but he was, somehow, still afraid of thunderstorms - but he wasn’t going to say no to hot chocolate. Cautiously, he took a sip; he burned his tongue anyway, of course, but it tasted delicious.

It was as much childhood as the storm outside, but a different shade of it, a different flash of memory, memories of Archie’s after school, Betty across the table, none of their feet touching the ground. Memories to, of home; boiling water on the stove for Jellybean.

They’d always liked their hot chocolate with water, all of them. Archie was lactose intolerant.

“Your dad never liked ‘em either,” said Fred abruptly.

“Huh?”

“Thunderstorms.” Fred smiled, as if for a second he was sixteen again too. “Your dad never liked thunderstorms. Never told anyone, of course, that wasn’t his style, but me and Alice, we could tell. Well - Alice could, took me longer to figure out. He’d get angry, tense everytime - course, your dad was angry and tense a lot, but it was a different kind.”

A version of his father who was afraid of thunderstorms flickered slowly before Jughead’s eyes, once, twice, vanishing like a lightening bug into the night. “My dad was afraid of thunder,” he repeated. It sounded absurd aloud.

Fred laughed, fond. “We used to tease him,” he said. “FP wasn’t afraid of  _ anything.  _ Drove a hundred miles an hour, dragged me and Alice into all sorts of crazy adventures, always chatting up - ” he cut himself off, grinning. “Anyway, but thunder, he couldn’t handle that. Would just start yelling at people. Eventually we’d just haul him off somewhere when the weather got bad. Drive him to Pop’s, mostly. Easier to give him food then try and talk him to it.”

Jughead smiled, feeling a little raw, a little exposed, a little like the world had flipped upside down, part of him still waiting for the next crash, the rest of him somehow, inexplicably, soothed, by the hot chocolate, by Fred’s quiet, laughing words. “Guess there’s not much to say.”

“There isn’t,” said Fred, leaning over, running a hand through Jug’s hair. “Sometimes you just ride out the storm.” He paused. “I don’t know about thirty minutes, but they always end, Jug.”

Jughead swallowed another sip of hot chocolate, and believed, for the first time in a long time, that storms ended.

Eventually, he rose, going back to bed, and when he did he accidentally kicked Archie in the head, and he stirred slightly. “Jug?” he mumbled, sleep in his eyes, his voice, strewing his hands across his face. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” whispered Jughead. “You wanna sleep on the bed?” 

“Over my dead bo - ” Archie yawned, “ - dy is a kid who just got beat up by thirty whatever last whenever..” He lapsed into mumbling, “sleep on the floor. Don’t be dumb.”

There was another rumble of thunder, softer this time. The storm was ending. “You okay, Jug?” he repeated, sounding a little more awake, as Jughead crawled back into bed.

“Yeah,” said Jughead, again. “Yeah, I was just having something to eat.”

“Just I know you don’t like storms,” said Archie, maybe because he was too sleepy for inhibition. “But it’s okay. They only last thirty minutes, you know.”

“Who told us that?” wondered Jughead aloud.

“Your - ” Archie yawned again, forcefully, his body dragging him back to sleep. He curled his arms around the pillow he was lying on. “Your dad,” he said, almost incoherent, into the pillow. “Long time ago. We were kids.. said he didn’t like them either.” Despite being probably ninety percent asleep, he opened his eyes, looking up at Jughead. “D’you remember?”

“Sort of.”

“Yeah. I don’t know it’s true, though.”

  
“I don’t know either.”

“Almost over.” Archie’s hands uncurled from the pillow, coming to rest by his sides. “Night, Jug.”

Maybe the final roll of thunder sounded, as if from very far away, and Jughead tried to remember being young, and his father telling him storms only lasted for thirty minutes. Thought about everything he loved about Fred, and how maybe FP had learned how to be a father from him, and how maybe, he had more than he thought he did, within his own father. Thought about how glad he was, for Archie, for Fred, for what they gave him, for how they brought him back to his father.

_ And whatever, scene,  _ he thought. “G’night, Arch. See you in the morning.”

The two boys slept easily through the night, Fred still downstairs, his night vigil at the kitchen table, for any wandering soul who might need a cup of hot chocolate, or enough stories to keep the darkness at bay.

 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> whew that was supposed to be 2 pages long and now i want to write a series about fred comforting various serpents in the kitchen. i love my boys so much and i love YOU for reading about them xxxxxxxxxx


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